ATG Hot Topics 7/22/16

I’m back after a brief hiatus last Friday while our library held our annual summer “retreat” at the Orange CountyHistory Center. If you’re ever in Orlando, skip the theme parks and check out the History Center; they have a lovely and thoughtful collection.

Let’s look at what’s been hot in the world of open access recently. First, you may recall the news three years ago when the University of California’s Academic Senate voted to make all faculty research articles openly available through their statewide repository. Considering that the UC public university research system is the world’s largest, this would mean a lot of articles. Fast-forward to July 2016, and check outthis piecein the Chronicle, reporting that the UC system is only capturing around 25% of research article output. We could point fingers at a variety of factors, from publisher contract restrictions to the voluntary nature of the policy, but deep down I think those of us who work in the realm of scholarly communication suspect this is a matter of indifference. Or just plain academic fatigue. Or/and, perhaps it’s another case of well-meaning librarians trying to push faculty researchers toward practices that we think they should need, which is frequently at odds with what they actually want and do. Your thoughts?

Last week, we saw ACRL issue a formal Policy Statement on Open Access to Scholarship by Academic Librarians. You can read the statementhere, but it ultimately calls on us to put our money where our mouths are regarding support of open access publishing. We can’t model the values of open access publishing if we’re not actively contributing to this evolution in our own practices.

And last but not least, you’ve probably seen the news about the development ofSocArXiv, which happens to coincide with Elsevier’s acquisition ofSSRN (Social Sciences Research Network). Rejoice and lament in the same breath! Richard Poynder’sblog postdoes a better job of getting to the nitty gritty on these news items than I. Your thoughts?